


A Spell in Azkaban

by Amanuensis



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Comedy, Death Eaters, The Quidditch Pitch: Darkness Falls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-10-05
Updated: 2005-10-05
Packaged: 2018-10-26 10:52:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10785336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amanuensis/pseuds/Amanuensis
Summary: The daring rescue. Only, not. Thanks to fabularasa for the beta.





	A Spell in Azkaban

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Annie, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Quidditch Pitch](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Quidditch_Pitch), which went offline in 2015 when the hosting expired, at a time I was not able to renew it. I contacted Open Doors, hoping to preserve the archive using an old backup, and began importing these works as an Open Doors-approved project in April 2017. Open Doors e-mailed all authors about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact us using the e-mail address on [The Quidditch Pitch collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/thequidditchpitch/profile).

She fled past the deserted ballroom. Past the gardens with their self-weeding beds and self-manicuring hedges, past the open-air natatorium and its cheery calypso music, across the quarter-scale Quidditch pitch where her heels sank dishearteningly into the soft lawn, tearing up clots of turf behind her as she ran.

She was panting by the time she reached the dining wing, and hexed the nose off the terrified chef manning the Mongolian stir-fry grill, just for spite.

This wasn't going to work. Where the hell was it?

She leashed in her haste and began a more meticulous sneak-and-search. The casino didn't have what she was looking for, neither did the karaoke bar. (She was able to resist ducking inside the latter to silence the assassin murdering Embraceable You.)

At last she spotted it, in the corridor leading away from the spa. In cursive text as curlicued and serifed as that designating the ladies' fitting room in the best of Diagon Alley couturiers, it glittered on the wall just above her eye level: Cell Block Three-B.

Cell Block Three-B was done up in tasteful browns and golds with just the right accent of dried autumn foliage. Even the numerical designations on each cell were done in wood-grain engraving that blended harmoniously, even if the numbers were harder to read as a result.

But at last she saw it: three-oh-six-six-five. With only the merest twinge over the amount of galleons it had cost to get that bit of detail out of her informant--plus the cleavage-revealing dress she'd worn that day to sweeten the deal, but she wasn't going to tell Lucius about that--she aimed her wand at the doorlock.

"Alohomoramora!" she cried, her wand's precision a trifle affected by her agitation, so that the additional wrist action sent up sparks and singed the edge of the "5." The lock clicked and the door yielded to a push.

And Narcissa yielded not only to relief but to the mingled outrage and disbelief that had been building since she'd slipped into the fortress of Azkaban prison. There, still clad in post-massage towels draped about his hips and neck, looking fit and glowy and gratifyingly open-mouthed with surprise, stood her husband, condensation-dewed glass of lemon-garnished water still in hand.

He closed his mouth. His lips twitched. "Aren't you a little short for a Death Eater?"

"Lucius, it's I!" she said, grammar betraying her even before she had thrown her hood back and torn the mask away.

"Ciss-Ciss?" He did not drop the glass, but it slipped in his fingers a fraction, contents sloshing. "You've come...all by yourself?"

"Well, don't say it as if you're disappointed," she huffed, folding her arms and tossing her blonde head. "You could at least pretend to be glad, for my sake! I know it wouldn't be for your own--" with another head toss she indicated the entire prison, casino, natatorium, and all-- "now that I see the truth! 'No, my dearest, do not come to visit me here--'" she could remember the words as if the parchment was in front of her-- "'such a dreadful venue is not for the likes of my beloved wife to endure; wait instead the short time until our lord sees fit to liberate me.' I traced those words with my lips, Lucius, aching for you, weeping for you--there were blots on your letters that I took for tears! Now I see they were likely that!" she snarled, pointing her wand at the drip of condensation that fell from his waterglass.

He had the grace to flush. "Darling, I wanted to be able to tell you. But the other prisoners--well, there's a code, see..." he finished lamely.

"I bloody well imagine there is!"

His face twinged as if she'd jabbed him with a pin. "Now, Ciss-Ciss, there's no reason to use that kind of language. It doesn't become you."

"Doesn't become me? Do you know what I've endured since you've gone, Lucius? Filthy leering Aurors tramping through our house without the slightest warning, the house-elves frantic to hide the dark artifacts and good silver and even my sex toys--which may I add are the only source of comfort I have these days--until they're gone, my sister and her husband showing up with no less frequency, helping themselves to our Chateau Nostradamus and rambling on about how I should be proud of your sacrifice and by the way Cissy, do you have any of that Petrossian caviar left?, me having to truck with horrid riff-raff informants and spend our gold and wear tarty low-cut dresses--" damn, she hadn't planned to tell him that-- "to learn things like your cell number so that I could get you out of what I naturally assumed was a hideous, soul-bleeding place? And I find this?"

"I wanted to tell you." His hangdog expression--one she'd never seen him use, not even to play on her sympathy--made her bite back her fury and listen, for the moment. "Since the Dementors left, we learned the place was...quite nice, actually. Turned out it had once been the summer retreat of Baron Ceintachwyr the Third. Before the Dementors, obviously. Had a few remodelings since. There's a rule among the prisoners about keeping it quiet--it's not as if we want the Ministry stepping in to make it all a house of horrors again."

"You might have given me some idea!" She yanked the left sleeve of her robe back to the elbow. "I took the Mark for you, Lucius! Voldemort wouldn't allow me to stage this rescue unless I was a full-fledged Death Eater. It took me a full year to convince him!"

Eyes widening and mouth falling open, Lucius grabbed her wrist. "You what? Narcissa, I told you I wouldn't have it!" He gave the Mark on her arm a look of disgust, as if he expected the snake on it to rise and drip poison all over the carpet. "Tattoos on a woman are gauche. You look like a Knockturn Alley trollop!" He looked accusingly at her face. "Did you do...that part of the initiation ritual?"

"Which part?" she said, drawn off-course by the question.

"That part."

"Oh." She swallowed. "That part. Yes."

"Oh, my God!" He dropped her arm, recoiling. "I'm never going to be able to share a bed with you again. Voldemort and my wife. Ew. Did you at least protest, you harlot?"

"No, I fucking well didn't protest! I was doing it for you, you double-standard unfeeling prick! Because I thought you were rotting away in here and I would have done anything I could to stop that! I don't fucking believe this!" She turned from him and screeched a curse at the piano in the corner of the room, for want of something spectacular to destroy that wasn't her husband. The echoing explosion of discord from the strings pleased her even more than the crumpling of wood and ivory and the resultant cloud of dust.

"Narcissa! That was seventeenth-century."

"So's your attitude!" She had the wand pointed at his face. "And I won't have it! I--" she drew herself up to her slim height-- "am a Death Eater, Lucius. I did it to save my husband when even our lord was unwilling to spend the effort. If I've not earned your thanks, I will have your respect!"

He was actually pouting, as he always did when defenseless. Despite its luxuries, Azkaban hadn't provided him with a wand to face her down. "You needn't have done it." She didn't even answer him. Her wand hand didn't waver. Slowly the pout left his face, and then, oh, she hated it when he used that little wistful smile on her; she'd no power against it-- "I've really missed you, Cissy."

"Have you." Still she kept the wand steady, but the waver was in her voice. Damn.

"Yes. Azkaban turned out to have all this--" he spread his hands in his version of her earlier head-toss-- "but it didn't have you."

"It's not going to be that easy," she retorted, knowing that it was and the rest of her outrage was just for show. "Don't think I've forgiven you. 'Never share a bed,' indeed! How do you think I felt when I realized you'd been through the same ritual?"

"We'll edit the memories. Cissy--" He came close to her, put his hands on her shoulders, despite the wand--her arm had slackened and it was only at his chest now, anyway-- "it doesn't make sense for me to leave here. Voldemort's furious with me for failing; I don't imagine a year has tempered that. You know how he is. And frankly, who'd want to leave? Perhaps if it meant returning to our home, but I'd live as a fugitive now. Dungeons, seedy little hideaways--can you imagine me shacking up at Voldemort's lair for any amount of time? Bats and mold and the occasional visiting carnivore-breathed werewolf for company. Eurgh." He shuddered and she almost caught herself doing the same. "No sane man would leave here for that." He gave her shoulders a squeeze, the smile blooming on his face again. "The food's amazing, Narcissa. They recently acquired Tadahiro Ochi as head sushi chef. Florian Fortescue wasn't taken by our side--he was just hired to work here. I'd've put on three stone if I didn't keep in shape." Here he slapped his lower abdomen, which, indeed, had lost none of its glorious tone. Despite her anger, Narcissa felt the familiar stirrings of arousal as she focused on the gold hairs of his treasure trail disappearing under the edge of that towel. Well. It had been a year, after all.

"You do seem to have managed," she said dryly, folding her arms so that he wouldn't notice her nipples peaking. Wouldn't do to let him know he had the advantage of her.

"One hundred laps in the pool every morning, for starters." He grinned. "Not that that's any hardship. You should see the cabana boys." He punctuated it with a noise of appreciation that Narcissa knew she'd heard to that degree only once--on their honeymoon in the Cotes du Rhone and it had been for the first sip of a bottle of a 1945 Domaine Orlando Premier Cru. Damn him.

Before she could open her mouth to berate him for mentioning what were obviously very accommodating cabana boys, when she'd been alone for a year with nothing but Madame Velissima's Pulsating Pleasure Pet for company, he said, "Stay here with me."

"...What?"

"Stay here. It can't be pleasant for you, knowing that you're doubly at risk, not only as the wife of a known Death Eater but as one yourself. And it doesn't leave me happy about it, either. We'll let everyone assume you were captured--if Voldemort's left me alone all this time, I can't think he's going to put forth a battalion just because it's both of us in here. Did I mention that they have larger suites for married couples? Macnair's going to be jealous as hell if we get one of those; he's been trying to bribe his way into one for months..." he broke off, musing.

"Is that why you want me to stay?" she said, not able to put as much contempt into it as she'd have liked. "So that you can have a nicer cell?"

Another man would have looked hurt. Lucius, though, knew exactly what to use on her. Another smile, this one slow and wolfish, as he drew her closer. One finger tilted her chin up, and the kiss he gave her was lingering and brain-meltingly sweet.

When he broke it, he murmured into her hair, "I really have missed you, Ciss-Ciss."

She turned her head to lay her cheek against his bare chest. Her fingers began to toy with the edge of the towel at his waist.

Loyalty to her lord, or her husband?

She sighed. "Can I...have a look at the cabana boys?"


End file.
